Tag Archives: FITARA

One of the most frequent topics of conversation among government IT leaders today is how to manage legacy systems at a time when the pressure to modernize is at an all time high but budgets remain tight. But what exactly is a legacy system, and why are they creating such problems in the federal government?

Despite the loss of billions of dollars of funding for IT modernization in the 2017 federal budget, agencies are making investments in their futures. Whether driven by a mandate to serve citizens better or to comply with regulations handed down from Congress, CIOs like LaVerne Council and Register of Copyrights, Maria Pallante are determined to bring their agencies and systems into the digital age.

Read on to find out where 18F, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the United States Postal Services (USPS), and the Copyright Office are making strategic investments.

Despite FITARA’s one-year anniversary, the law continues to present challenges for Chief Information Officers (CIO) and their agencies. To that end, FCW hosted an executive roundtable in early December to discuss the one-year anniversary of the enactment. Similarly, an additional benefit to the roundtable is the much needed CIO perspective on the practical realities of the law and its implementation.

It would not be a stretch to say that Richard McKinney appreciates the intent of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act.

McKinney, the CIO at the U.S. Department of Transportation, told an audience at the MeriTalk FITARA Forum in December that the law will help him provide a real cost-benefit analysis when assessing the potential impact of an IT procurement.

Next month will mark a year that FITARA has been in effect. Yet, Chief Information Officers (CIO) and their executive staff continue to wrestle with how to maneuver the legislation in order to effectually align compliance with individual agency mission. As a result, the last year has been a testing ground of sorts for many CIOs, where they have learned what works what doesn’t.

The first report cards measuring how well agencies are meeting their FITARA requirements was released this week and the results were not very good. According to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee the GSA and the Department of Commerce are ahead of the curve, receiving a grade of B, but most agencies earned a grade of D, no agency merited an A. Despite the dismal interim report, there are still many reasons to be confident that agencies will be able to meet FITARA requirements both for the next deadline on December 31st and as they update their self-assessments in April 2016.

With the next FITARA deadline coming up at the end of 2015, federal CIOs need to “understand their options and obligations under the new law,” commented Darryn Graham, Chief Architect for Software AG Government Solutions. In a recent article published by NextGov, Graham shared his perspectives on FITARA and recent comments made by federal CIO Tony Scott at the FIITARA Implementation Symposium, hosted by the Association for Enterprise Information (AEFI) in Arlington, Virginia.

There is no doubt that 2015 has been a critical juncture for federal government agencies in how they approach cyber security. Spurred by the OPM breach, Federal CIO Tony Scott first announced the 30-day cyber security sprint, which, over the summer, became the foundation of a coordinated federal cyber security strategy. Combined with the empowerment of the CIO role under the auspices of FITARA, it seems that federal agencies are poised to make major strides in all aspects of cyber security – from infrastructure to data security.